Despite his failing health, Hollywood legend Alfred Newman spent the better part of 1964 and 1965 writing the music for George Stevens’s The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965). A director with impeccable credentials (A Place in the Sun, The Diary of Anne Frank), Stevens sought to create the most literate religious epic ever made, referencing the New Testament to tell this story about the birth, ministry, execution and resurrection of Jesus (Max von Sydow). Already a veteran of the biblical genre (The Egyptian, The Robe), Newman had to filter the classic Hollywood sound he had invented into an aesthetic that observed the hushed proprieties of Stevens’s film. As a result there is pastoral elegance to spare, most notably an Adagio for strings (“Main title”) that he sometimes orchestrates for woodwinds (“I will make you fishers of men”). Avoiding older church modes, the composer uses terraced dynamics and major/minor shifts to achieve his harmonic effects. High-range string writing was always a Newman forte and the composer excels at dividing the full complement of bows here. There is also pseudo-archaic music (flute over harp), a noble processional borrowed from Liszt’s Les Preludes and Ken Darby’s accomplished choral settings. To his lasting bitterness, Newman watched his music for two key scenes replaced by excerpts from Handel’s Messiah. His unused work for these scenes (“Lazarus, come forth”, “Resurrection and Ascension”) can be heard in this uncompromising three-disc set from Rykodisc, which includes the soundtrack album re-recording (disc one) as well as the complete film soundtrack sequenced into continuous symphonic suites. The sound quality is remarkably ambient and noiseless.'